Missing Scenes: Patience
by QueenHimiko
Summary: Gourry and Luke have a little chat over a game of cards. Novels continuity, set sometime during "Evil Devices in Solaria."


**AN: I do not own** _ **The Slayers**_ **, I just play in the sandbox.**

Gourry studied his cards as Luke put down his bet, "So, you and Lina seemed rather comfy at dinner." Luke observed.

"Did we?" Gourry replied. It had been an enjoyable dinner, but nothing too extraordinary happen. A lot of jokes had flown between them. A few pats on the head and shoulder were bestowed. Though, now that Luke mentioned it and Gourry had time to think about it, it seemed as though they had both rebounded from the incident with Hellmaster.

"Um-huh." Luke said knowingly, "I bet if you tried tonight you could get lucky."

Gourry smiled. "I'm already lucky. I met Lina, and I'm traveling with her."

Luke looked at him, astonished, "Oh, you can't be that simple! Don't you want to get all cuddly with her and do all of that couples stuff?"

Gourry scratched his head nervously. "Well, it's not that I don't want to…"

"Then why don't you?"

"Well, because getting to travel with Lina is more important to me than doing the couples stuff." Gourry said, "I mean, I want to, but what if she doesn't?"

"You won't know if you never say anything. I declare my love for my Milina as much as possible."

Gourry felt exasperated over the fact that Luke was proving his point without realizing it. "And she tears you down flat every time. I'm surprised she hasn't left you."

"That's because deep inside she really loves me." Luke said proudly, "She's just too shy to admit it yet!"

Gourry shook his head but decided arguing the point was useless. While Gourry took Milina's denials of affection at face value, he also had no idea why she continued to travel with someone who irritated her so much, so he let the matter go. "Look, Lina is all I have. Especially now that I lost the Sword of Light. If I do anything to mess things up between us then I'll have nothing. And besides, Lina's still young and more interested in travel than the couple's stuff. When she's ready she'll let me know."

"But what if something happened to her?" Luke asked, "What if she died and you never got to tell her…"

Gourry felt something cold wash through him as he remembered the times where he came a little too close to losing her. He firmly laid his cards down, "If she died I wouldn't be able to be with her. I'd regret that more than anything. So I'm going to make sure that doesn't happen."

Luke persisted, "But you can't control everything! What if your luck ran out and she did die and she didn't know how you felt?" Then Luke paused to look at the cards, "Damn, how does an idiot like you get so good at cards?"

Gourry thought for a moment before saying, "Words can be meaningless if our actions don't back them up, so I try to let my actions speak more than my words. If she doesn't realize it by how I treat her, then I'm not doing a good job of showing her how I feel."

Luke looked at him in awe, "Wow, that's so noble!"

Gourry shrugged, feeling a bit awkward, "Look, I want to be with Lina for the rest of my life, so I just can't rush into this. The foundation has to be there and it has to be strong to stand up to whatever comes our way."

Luke tossed down his cards, "From where I'm standing it looks strong enough. She's crazy about you! I still don't get why you don't just go for it."

Gourry decided not to tell him that he didn't trust Luke's appraisal of anyone's feeling. This was the man who was convinced that Milina was in love with him despite all of the evidence to the contrary after all! But then, with distance from a relationship there was clarity, so Luke could be right. But Gourry wasn't going to risk it. Officially the only reason Lina said she was traveling with him was to get him a replacement sword. While he hoped it was a pretext she never said anything to the contrary. He was going to take her on her word and wait patiently until she told him otherwise. Besides, even if Lina never returned his feelings he still wanted to be close to her because just being around her was so rewarding.

He smiled as he gathered his winnings, musing to himself that Luke was just as terrible at cards as he was at romance.


End file.
